Sunday, August 14, 2011

A cautionary tale

I'm telling about what happened as a public service. Maybe you will avoid what happened to us.

My son broke our brand new television this weekend. The 60" Samsung that hung on the wall in our newly-finished basement is no more. It was a careless accident; he lost his grip on the Wii controller and threw it smack into the television. Gone. Just like that.

I'm sharing this because I had no idea it was that easy to kill a television. What can you do to avoid this? Maybe nothing, but there are some things to try to lessen your chances.

First, think about the proximity of the seating to the television. It happens that the sofa is kind of close to the television here. (I know, then why is it 60"? It worked in the room, trust me.) So the possibility of something hitting the screen just goes up. Actually, the seats are fine, but I have (just) discovered that the boys like to stand in front of the sofa to play their games. Maybe we should have taken the sofa out and just had those low "gamer" chairs that my husband hates. The idea here, though, is to be aware of how close those controllers get to the television!

Second, MAKE the kids wear those wrist straps. I have to say, I thought they were using them. I always use them! They are there because the stupid controller can fly from your hand and hit something or someone. USE them.

Next, think about a plasma versus LED. We have a plasma TV in another area, and upon further inspection I think it wouldn't have broken quite so easily. Of course, I could be wrong. But think about it.

Finally, consider the warranty when you buy that television. We weren't "suckers," so of course we didn't purchase any warranty when we bought the TV. Now, I haven't checked the details to see if a warranty would have covered something like this accident, but I'm assuming it would have. I'm going to consider it the next time we buy something like this.

Yes, not much technical information here. I wanted to let you know this is possible! It had never even occurred to me. And then, one day, THUD, and there went our awesome television that we watched while my sweet husband and I played pool in the evening.